"Naturally, many of these same people are also implying that because Netflix has to pay Comcast, consumers will foot the bill for this as Netflix will have to charge more for their service. This could not be further from the truth. Those stating this have no clue how Netflix delivers their content today or what costs they already incur. If they did, they would know this is not a new cost to Netflix, it’s simply paying a different provider, and it should be at a lower cost. It should actually be cheaper for Netflix to buy direct from Comcast, and they also get an SLA, which also improves quality and that’s a good thing. Given that Netflix has many options to buy transit from many different transit providers, why would they pay more? They wouldn’t."

Have you notice better or worse service from your Internet provider lately?

Microsoft wants to use the Kinect to determine if the viewing audience has enough "per-user-view" licenses to watch a movie, TV show, or special event. From the patent application:

A content presentation system and method allowing content providers to regulate the presentation of content on a per-user-view basis. Content is distributed an associated license option on the number of individual consumers or viewers allowed to consume the content. Consumers are presented with a content selection and a choice of licenses allowing consumption of the content. The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken.

If the studios decide to use the Kinect to limit viewers of a title, will you be putting a towel over the Kinect (or unplugging it) before streaming movies or showing a pay-per-view event at a party?

Did you watch the Emmy Awards tonight? Netflix has about 39 nominated shows on streaming, according to the Netflix Blog:

For US members, we’re thrilled to let you know you can stream 39 Emmy-nominated series on Netflix, including a few series you will only find exclusively here: Mad Men, most nominated series of the year with 17 noms (wow!), Breaking Bad (13 noms!), a truly addictive viewing experience, and The Walking Dead, which will scare the life out of you.

Reader Jonathan watches a lot of Netflix since he cut the cable TV cord, and since he used more than 270gb of data, Comcast notified him that he was nearing the limit of his "monthly data usage allowance." Jonathan wondered how Comcast was able to send this message, and it turns out that they injected the message code into webpages he was viewing.

The notice reads: "You have reached 90% of your monthly data usage allowance. Please sign in for more information and to remove this alert."

You can use up to 2.3 gigabytes of data per hour if you're watching streaming in HD resolution, according to the Netflix help system.

In fact, referring to what he calls a “studio addiction” on Netflix, Wible described something of a vicious circle, whereby media companies see their ratings and ad revenue hurt by Netflix streaming, and respond by licensing even more content to the service.

TechCrunch reports that at a BBC meeting a senior exec said that if the BBC content was offered through streaming services like Netflix it could wipe out up to 80% of BBC revenue.

According to one account of a presentation made last Friday by Dan Heaf, EVP and managing director of digital for BBC Worldwide (the BBC’s commercial arm), Heaf reportedly said that if everyone got their BBC content via services like Netflix at its current subscription rates — the equivalent of $7.99 or £5.99 per month — it could wipe out 80 percent of BBC Worldwide’s revenues. To be clear, the BBC, which didn’t invite media to the event, has denied the percentage. But it does admit that its digital business is less profitable and generates less revenues for it right now as they transition away from more traditional forms of media, and that is driving the company to find new ways to grow that digital business:

“Audiences are transitioning from physical to digital platforms and BBC Worldwide understands the importance of using these new platforms in order to grow reach and revenue. However, as digital platforms can be less profitable than traditional physical platforms, BBC Worldwide is managing the transition by developing new additive [digital] revenues,” a spokesperson says, citing live events,BBC.com and BBC Global iPlayer as three of these.

Home Media Magazine cites a Parks Associate report that says customers are checking Netflix before renting movies on video on demand or watching HBO or Showtime.

Dallas-based Parks found that 16% of U.S. broadband homes consider using an SVOD service such as Netflix (or Hulu Plus) when watching movies on VOD. Another 17% of respondents check out Netflix before watching programming on premium channels such as HBO and Showtime.

The latter statistic is noteworthy considering Time Warner-owned HBO is aggressively seeking to circumvent the rise in SVOD popularity through its acclaimed HBO Go platform, which allows subscribers to access the premium channel's programming in high-definition on myriad consumer electroncis devices any time.

While I was on break Netflix announed the launch of a content delivery Network called Open Connect.

Around the world, people are enjoying nearly a billion hours per month of movies and TV shows from Netflix. We’ve been delivering these petabytes of data exclusively through commercial content delivery networks.

Now, in addition to these general-purpose commercial CDNs, we are enabling ISPs to get Netflix video data from Open Connect, a single-purpose Netflix content delivery network we’ve established. The world’s other major Internet video provider, YouTube, has long had its own content delivery network. Given our size and growth, it now makes economic sense for Netflix to have one as well. We’ll continue to work with our commercial CDN partners for the next few years, but eventually most of our data will be served by Open Connect.

Like commercial CDNs, Open Connect will provide the Netflix data at no cost to the locations the ISP desires, or ISPs can choose to get the Netflix data at common internet exchanges. About 5% of Netflix data is already being served by Open Connect.

What's interesting about Open Connect is that Netflix is sharing how they're doing this for free, explaining the hardware design and making the Open Connect software open source. Information about Open Connect, including details about the hardware & software, can be found online at http://openconnect.netflix.com/.

There was a bit of a fuss when this was announced, but Dan Rayburn (more informed about this topic than me), tries to explain what this means to companies like Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight.